The importance of dental records in forensic human identification

Abstract

The objective of the present study is to emphasize the importance of clinical dental records in forensic human identification efforts, in order to make an investigation with the data collected from records of the Laboratory for Forensic Anthropology and Legal Dentistry at the Santo André (SP) Legal Medicine Institute, related to the years from 2000 to 2007. From the analyzed forensics reports (n = 32), only 37.50% were identified, and among these, 66.67% were identified by means of dental records, showing the clinical and forensic relevance of this method, and justifying the recording of more information on treated patients, leading to higher rates of cadaver identification.